Pa­tients get healthy sup­port

THE Childers Hos­pi­tal has re­ceived a healthy boost due to the roll­out of im­proved al­lied health ser­vices for ru­ral lo­ca­tions.

The hos­pi­tal is one of six fa­cil­i­ties in the Wide Bay Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vice cur­rently com­plet­ing ori­en­ta­tion of al­lied health as­sis­tants – part of a $902,000 State Govern­ment grant to im­prove ru­ral health ser­vices across the Wide Bay.

“Our al­lied health as­sis­tants will work un­der the di­rec­tion of al­lied health pro­fes­sion­als such as phys­io­ther­a­pists and oc­cu­pa­tional ther­a­pists.”

Denise Kretschmann is the newly ap­pointed al­lied health as­sis­tant based in Childers.

Ms Baker said Denise would be on the ground to of­fer daily sup­port to in­pa­tients as well as con­duct home vis­its.

Ms Kretschmann said she was “ex­cited” to have been given the op­por­tu­nity to make a dif­fer­ence to peo­ple’s health.

Ac­cord­ing to Wide Bay Hos­pi­tal and Health Ser­vice chief ex­ec­u­tive Adrian Pen­ning­ton, the ap­point­ment of al­lied health as­sis­tants is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the health ser­vice’s ef­forts to im­prove health out­comes for res­i­dents of ru­ral com­mu­ni­ties across the Wide Bay.